Ali Khamenei

Ali Khamenei (born 17 July 1939) was the President of Iran from 1981 to 1989 (succeeding Mohammed-Ali Rajai, preceding Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani) and the Supreme Leader of Iran since 1989, succeeding Ayatollah Khomeini.

Biography
Khamenei was born in Mashhad, Iran, in 1939. He claimed patrilinel descent from Ali ibn Ali Talib, the son-in-law of Muhammad and the father of Hussein ibn Ali. Khamenei's father was an Azeri and his mother was a Persian-speaker from Yazd. Formerly an Imam, he became a leading politician in the government after the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah.

In 1981, while serving as Deputy Minister of Defense of Iran, he lost the use of his right arm after a bomb hidden in a tape recorder exploded and injured him. After the assassination of President Mohammed-Ali Rajai, he became the next President of Iran, and inherited the role of commanding Iran's forces in the Iran-Iraq War. Khameini had to deal with the rival country of Iraq, led by the dictator Saddam Hussein, and waged a World War I-style war that was the longest conventional war of the 1980s.

In 1989, after Ayatollah Khomeini's death, Khamenei became the new Supreme Leader of Iran, an Islamic title rather than a political title.